Schools face tough budget season

Thursday

GARDNER While concerns over school funding are commonplace, the problem can be exasperated in communities such as Gardner with urban demographics.

GARDNER While concerns over school funding are commonplace, the problem can be exasperated in communities such as Gardner with urban demographics.

The school district has reported that since 2003 the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunch has gone from 19 percent to almost 60 percent.

In addition, the number of English language learner students has gone from zero to over 100 students and the percentage of students with disabilities from 19 to 22 percent.

District officials have cited that research shows students from low-income backgrounds are more likely to struggle in school, creating a need to offer professional development to teachers to effectively teach these students and provide support personnel.

“Oftentimes, they come from families that are broken in a lot of ways,” Superintendent Mark Pellegrino told the School Committee recently. “When there is a cut, support is often first.”

He noted that last year two guidance counselor positions were cut from the budget.The state uses the term “high needs” to describe students who fit into at least one of three categories. Those categories are economically disadvantaged, which denotes participation in a state-administered welfare program, English language learners or have a disability.

In the 2016-2017 district profile from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Gardner is listed as having 60 percent of its students being high needs. The district has about 2,500 students.

Over the last couple months, district staff has been preparing for the fiscal 2018 budget and discussing with school principals both what they could cut if needed and what they would like to add.

Business Administrator Robert Detweiler mentioned that support positions like guidance counselors, special education teachers and English language learner teachers are among those the district would like to add.

School Committee member Anne Hurst commented on the poverty in the district, including that some students face hunger, as she alluded to the efforts at the schools to run food pantries.

“That’s real. This is our community. We can’t think this doesn’t happen here anymore,” she said.

A topic discussed among Pellegrino and the School Committee was the difficulty in adequately providing for a high-needs district through net school spending, which combines state Chapter 70 funds and the city’s required contribution.

The state ranks school districts in terms of performance on a one-to-five scale, with one being the best and five the worst. Gardner is ranked as a level three district, placing it in the bottom 20th percentile of schools in the state.

Pellegrino went over data about school districts throughout the state that spend only their required contribution or just above, including how those districts are ranked by the state.

Gardner was listed at spending between zero and 1 percent above its net school spending requirement.

Out of 26 districts listed as spending between zero and 1 percent above their requirement, 88.5 percent of them are level three, four or five districts in performance.

By contrast, out of 262 districts that spend 5 percent or more above their requirement, only 13 percent are level three, four or five districts.

Pellegrino also talked about how Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores go up with the practice of full inclusion, which allows students that require additional supports to stay in the classroom. He said Gardner will need more supports in the classroom to become a level one district.

It can also make financial sense long-term to provide those supports. For example, if the district cannot provide adequate support, a special education student may need to be placed out-of-district.

Over time, that practice can be costly as the district is estimated to pay about $2 million in special education out-of-district placement tuition for fiscal ’18. Those tuition costs were over $1.3 million in fiscal 2012 and have risen since.

For the current year, the school district has reported a special education tuition cost of $1.8 million which covers 31 students.

The trend of School Choice and its financial impact was discussed as well among the School Committee members. In general, a sending district pays $5,000 per student to the receiving district as a reimbursement. The cost of sending tuition is projected to be $1.6 million next year.

Over the last several years, the district’s School Choice Revolving Fund, which has been used to help fund teacher salaries, has been gradually decreasing.

According to the school district, in 2008 the district received 299 students from other districts while sending 133 students living in Gardner to other districts. That was a net gain of 166 students.

In 2014, Gardner began to send away more students than it received, starting a trend that has continued. In 2017, Gardner sent 278 students to other districts and received 112 students. With a net loss of 166 students, that is the exact opposite of 2008.

“It is so out of whack now, the School Choice now has become either you love it or it is absolutely positively killing you,” School Committee member James Abare said. “It’s a real problem and within a decade at this rate there’s no way we’ll be able to compete.”

Pellegrino spoke about the need to keep money in the district to educate kids here and noted that “this is something a lot of the urban districts are dealing with.”The overall view given by district administration was that it is more cost-effective long-term to provide the supports necessary to hopefully keep more students in Gardner.

Pellegrino also made a point of noting that Gardner’s non-high-needs population has always thrived and that subgroup does well academically compared to non-high-needs students in other districts.

He added the high school offers an above-average amount of Advanced Placement courses.

As previously mentioned, Gardner has 60 percent of its students labeled as high-needs. By way of comparison the state lists Narragansett as having 36.7 percent high-needs students, Ashburnham-Westminster at 30.5 percent, Quabbin at 37.2 percent and Winchendon at 50.6 percent.

Moving east to a larger city, Fitchburg is listed as having 70.3 percent high-needs students.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.